FreedomDemocrats's blog

McArdle on Choice

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:36:46 -0700

Megan McArdle on Bristol Palin and being pro-choice:

I realize that many pro-choicers view abortion, as I do not, as a morally neutral act. But this is supposed to be about women doing what is right for them. What is right for you includes your moral beliefs about when a fetus becomes a full human life. There are a whole bunch of really bad beliefs bundled here: that you KNOW when life begins, and Bristol Palin does not; that you know that motherhood is wrong for her; that the most important thing in the entire world is having the same four years of carefree quasi-adulthood at a good college that I (and presumably you) did; that you, in short, are far better positioned to know what is right for Bristol Palin, whom you have never met and who lives several thousand miles from you, than do Bristol Palin and her family.

Excellent writing, as always.

Sarah Palin: Dangerous Librarian

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:24:59 -0700

I thought that all of the jokes and references to Governor Sarah Palin having the "sexy librarian" look were inappropriate for political commentary. But it seems that the Alaska Governor does have a fiery relationship with books:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Arctic Fiscal Conservatism

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:19:55 -0700

I suppose that when you have Ted Stevens and Don Young representing you in Congress, it's easy for this to pass as fiscal conservatism:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents while she was its mayor, according to an analysis by an independent government watchdog group.

Update: No Vetting of Sarah Palin

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:56:32 -0700

Nail on the coffin for the idea that John McCain's campaign has any degree of professionalism.

Reuters: "The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Sarah Palin: Desperation

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:51:19 -0700

Marc Ambinder's fine reporting on the Sarah Palin pick reveals, with little doubt, that John McCain either picked Sarah Palin at the last second as a desperate Hail Mary pass, or his campaign is incompetent in their research.

They've bragged that Palin opposed the famous "Bridge to Nowhere," only to learn that Palin supported the project and even told residents of Ketchikan that they weren't "nowhere" to her. After the national outcry, she decided to spend the funds allocated to the bridge for something else. Actually, maybe it's more fair to say that coincident with the national outcry, she changed her mind. The story shows her political judgment, but it is not a reformer's credential.

Likewise, though she cut taxes as mayor of Wassila, she raised the sales tax, making her hardly a tax cutter.

She denied pressuring the state's chief of public safety to fire her sister-in-law's husband even though there's mounting evidence that the impetus did indeed come from her. Ostensibly to clear her name, Palin asked her attorney general to open an independent investigation—the legislature had already been investigating. (I am told that the campaign was aware of the ethics complaint filed against her but accepts Palin's account.)

McCain's campaign seemed unaware that she supported a windfalls profits tax on oil companies and that she is more skeptical about human contributions to global warming than McCain is.

They did not know that she took trips as the mayor of Wasilla to beg for earmarks.

They did not know that she told a television interviewer this summer that she did not fully understand what it is that a vice president does.

Why Palin Is Wrong . . . For McCain

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:35:09 -0700

Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, a remarkable person regardless of her gender, is the wrong pick for Senator John McCain to serve as his Vice-President--should he win the election. I think that over the next few days the disconnect between Sarah Palin's background and John McCain's campaign will become more apparent, and the desired bump in the polls will dissipate.

First, she is inexperienced. John McCain has been campaigning for President--this time--longer than she has been in office. For a party that was previously attacking Virginia Governor Tim Kaine as "inexperienced" and writing off Richmond as a minor city, it is absurd to argue that Sarah Palin's record in Alaska as Governor is somehow different. Or that Wasilla, but not Richmond, is a major metropolitan area.

Barack Obama's State Senate seat in Illinois has a larger population than Wasilla.

Being inexperienced is not a death blow to Sarah Palin as Vice-President. It is a death blow to Sarah Palin as John McCain's Vice-President given his criticisms of Barack Obama. Put Sarah Palin on a ticket with Mitt Romney and suddenly you're talking about bringing reform to Washington. Romney's line of attack was never going to be about experience. Experience is the only attack that John McCain has against Barack Obama.

Second, this is shallow pandering to female voters. It's almost certain that John McCain's campaign polled several female Vice-Presidential picks, from Sarah Palin to Kay Baily Hutchinson to Carly Fiorina. There were several trial balloons sent up about a female VP pick. Because of Palin's short time in office and lack of record, she's probably the only one that didn't have some skeletons in the closet. She's essentially "Generic Republican Woman" in the polls.

As Gallup notes, the biggest question is how Sarah Palin will appeal to white independent female voters. They are the real swing voters among the larger group of female voters. It's unlikely that McCain could perform any better among white Republican female voters, nor will he significantly improve his margins among dedicated white Democratic female voters by picking a VP who is so sharply socially conservative--especially on reproductive rights.

What is offensive to me is that Sarah Palin's only ability to help John McCain pick up voters is based on identity politics and not the issues. John McCain is well positioned, relative to other possible Republican nominees, in appealing to independent voters. Sarah Palin is a straight down the line conservative; she doesn't has the same ideological appeal to independent voters that, say, a Christine Todd Whitman would have. McCain is telling independent voters, particularly independent female voters, that he hopes to win over their vote simply by picking a female as VP, regardless of her actual ideology.

Sarah Palin does not reinforce John McCain's appeal to the middle. Nor does she help lock down his economic credentials. Ideologically, she helps to lock down the base by avoiding a pro-choice VP. A lot of McCain's potential picks, ranging from Romney to Lieberman to Ride, had the potential to hurt him with his base in one way or another. From that regard, Palin does no harm. But she does little to strengthen John McCain where he is weak. And by offering a superficial offer to independent female voters, she has the potential to risk a serious backlash.

What Would Palin Do As VP?

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:55:03 -0700

Cut to 2:50 into it:

Alaska Primary . . .

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:21:57 -0700

Check out that Alaska primary. Don Young is still around to be defeated by the Democratic challenger, Mark Begich, but the House Republican primary between Don Young and Sean Parnell is still too close to call. Don Young would be a much easier opponent for Democrat Ethan Berkowitz; as a Democrat I am cheering on Don Young to pull out a victory. But as an American, I only wish there had been a way to push Sean Parnell, a superior candidate to the utterly corrupt Don Young, over the top.

WTF Paul? Part Two

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:40:21 -0700

What the hell happened to Ron Paul?

Former Republican presidential contender Ron Paul has endorsed Don Young in his bid to win an 18th term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Paul, the 72-year-old congressman from Texas whose maverick presidential bid drew wide support in Alaska, sent out a letter to his supporters here urging them to vote for Young.

“Don and I have served together in Congress for many years, and I consider him a friend,” Paul wrote in the letter. “Don has been an outspoken voice against environmental extremists over the years and has strongly opposed the types of federal regulatory overreach advocated in the name of environmentalism.”

Paul and Young are a bit of an odd couple. Paul is a fiscal conservative; Young believes in earmarking federal dollars for Alaska wherever possible. Paul opposes the Iraq war; Young supports it.

Ron Paul is very quickly burning any and all credibility he has as a figurehead of the small government movement within the Republican Party. He's backing a pork-barrel and Mike Huckabee-endorsed Republican over a small government conservative, Sean Parnell, backed by the Club for Growth. Almost all of the scenarios discussed here at Freedom Democrats for the resurgence of true small government conservatives depended on an alliance of sorts between the Club for Growth and the Ron Paul Revolution. Now, we instead have growing signs of an alliance between Mike Huckabee's Christian conservatives followers and the Ron Paul Revolution. This is sham limited government conservatism. We'll get a party that will continue its social, cultural, and religious intolerance despite cries of "FREEDOM!" at the top of their lungs.

WTF Paul?

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:33:39 -0700

Got this e-mail from the Campaign for Liberty:

How Do You Rank the Issues?

*1 = Very big issue 2 = Somewhat an issue 3 = Not as much an issue 4 = Not an issue at all

Saving Unborn Babies from Abortion

Defending the 2nd Amendment

Stopping Dangerous ID (i.e. the so-called Real ID scam)

Fighting other Issues - - please describe below

An anti-choice agenda is now a cornerstone for the Campaign for Liberty?

Rage, rage against the dying of the 'white'

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:12:46 -0700

OK, pardon the pun.

But today, the New York Times is drawing attention to the Census moving up the date by which non-Hispanic whites will be in the minority. It's now 2042, not 2050, but who's counting, other than the New York Time, the Census, and Tom Tancredo?

This is bad news for the Republican Party if you believe that modern conservatism is the expression of a specifically white protestant view of the United States. But if you instead focus on a more pan-Christian approach that celebrates the rise of a "Christian Democracy" style of modern conservatism, built on blue-collar Catholics fleeing secular liberalism, all is not lost for the GOP.

So which is it?

I tend to believe the latter is more accurate than the former, but largely because of developments from the 1970s onward. But I don't think the upcoming political narrative of how America adapts to becoming a fully multicultural and multiracial society has been written in stone yet. There are a lot of unanswered questions about how progressivism will govern once in office, and what conservatives will do to regain the majority.

Obama Beating Kerry

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:55:28 -0700

Josh Goodman at Governing.com points out that Barack Obama is ahead of John Kerry's performance in the vast majority of states. In only four states is John McCain doing better than George W. Bush's 2004 performance.

-McCain supporters can take heart because their candidate's worst states (or Obama's best states) aren't traditional swing states. Of the ten states where Obama is running furthest ahead of Kerry, none was decided by fewer than 8 percentage points in 2004. In contrast, McCain's second-best state (Nevada), eighth-best state (Michigan) and ninth-best state (Oregon) were all decided by fewer than five points last time around.

-The most fascinating thing about the state-by-state numbers: Every single one of Obama's 12 strongest states when compared to Kerry has an African-American population that is BELOW the national average of 12.4%. This group includes four states -- Montana, Idaho, South Dakota and Wyoming -- that have the four lowest black populations in the country.

You can make a case that this is about McCain and not Obama. Westerners tend to be libertarian-minded, which McCain generally isn't. The immigration legislation that McCain has sponsored in the Senate also might be a problem.

This gets to my observation earlier that Barack Obama has a strong advance in the popular vote count, the ultimately meaningless beauty contest run parallel to an electoral college fight. A McCain victory in the electoral college while Obama wins the popular vote is still unlikely. A far more likely outcome is that Obama wins a reasonably tight electoral college fight while blowing McCain out in the popular vote.

2008 Data

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:43:46 -0700

Check out this poll from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. White evangelical support is unchanged for Obama from the same point in the election for Kerry in 2004, the same is true for white mainline Protestants. But Obama is way down among white non-Hispanic Catholics.

Religious Trends . . .

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:16:21 -0700

I just finished reading "Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State" and I am highly suggesting it as a very valuable and insightful look at American politics. I'm thankful that one of the more interesting trends they identified was put onto their blog: trends in religion and partisanship. Jews and non-Christians seem to show almost no real shift in partisanship over the years, and with the increase in non-religious and non-Christian voters this is a good sign for the Democratic Party's coalition. We are all familiar with the trend of Evangelical Protestants away from the Democratic Party and to the Republican Party, but I'd like to highlight the two other groups: Mainline Protestants and Catholics. Catholics seem to be trending Republican, while Mainline Protestants are actually trending Democratic.

Now look at the second graph. Note also that for non-evangelical Protestants, there's only a slight correlation between frequency in church attendance and support for the Republican Party. Born again Christians start out as more Republican and have a steeper slope in the correlation between church attendance and partisanship. Catholics are more similar to non-evangelical Protestants in that they have a smaller correlation. This just shows the trend for 2004, but the authors note that 2000 is generally similar.

There are a lot of things to observe here. First, Catholics are becoming more Republican over time, despite a growth in the share of Catholics made up by Democratic-leaning Hispanics. This argues for an even greater shift to the GOP by white Catholics. Combined with the pro-Democratic trend among Mainline Protestants, are we on the cusp of a "trade-off" in which Catholics and Mainline Protestants switch in their overall partisan loyalties? Is this trend at work when we see polls showing Obama competitive in historically Lutheran influenced North Dakota?

Also, consider the topic of why evangelicals are more pro-life than Catholics brought up by Ed Kilgore, Ross Douthat, and Megan McArdle. Ross I think gets it right, but I like how Megan explains it:

On the larger question, I think Ross is on the right track, but I might state it slightly differently: evangelicalism is self-selecting in a way that Catholicism isn't. Catholicism is as often a proxy for ethnicity as it is for belief; I observe Lent not because I believe in the risen Christ, but because my ancestors have done so for a couple of thousand years. Not that I self-identify as Catholic, but I know a lot of people who think of themselves that way even though their main connection to the Church is watching the occasional Hail Mary pass.

Evangelicals who stop believing in God, or biblical literalism, don't continue to call themselves evangelicals. The religion itself encourages forum shopping. Lukewarm Catholics, on the other hand, tend to stay put.

Despite Catholics showing less enthuthiasm for the pro-life cause as evangelicals, they are trending Republican. And this doesn't seem to be correlated with Catholic demographics changing with a rise in the percentage of Catholics with high church attendance; all Catholics tend to be more or less equally likely to vote Republican. Something seems to be shifting all Catholics closer to the Republican Party, parallel to an opposite trend among Mainline Protestants.

I think this gets down to issues of ethnicity and identity. Mainline Protestants, where they still linger on after the rise of secularism and evangelicalism, tend to be associated with a host of good government reformers in Greater New England. The identity of most Catholic voters seems to square up with the stereotypical white working class Reagan Democrat that Ross Douthat identifies as the new base of the Republican Party.

Weekend Question . . .

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:58:23 -0700

With InBev buying out Anheuser-Busch, I'm a little confused as to what to drink this Olympics while chanting "USA! USA!" Pabst Brewing is a "virtual brewer" that markets beer made by Miller (foreign!), while Boston Beer Company is a "contract brewer." I don't fully understand the difference between "virtual brewer" and "contract brewer," it seems to be a difference of degrees and not kind. So unless someone speaks up to defend Sam Adams, the largest all American brewer seems to be Yuengling now. Which is amazing, given that both BBC and Yuengling make up less than 1% of American beer sales individually. American beer is now the long tail of beer.